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Premier Bedrooms is a family-run business based in Fife with four employees. Owner Michael Cunningham approached Healthy Working Lives when he realised that health and safety policies could help him to win new business.

Healthy Working Lives helped us to put together policies and procedures that helped us to get tender work.Michael Cunningham - Owner

It is now common for large organisations to ask to see workplace policies when choosing their suppliers. When one of Michael’s clients introduced a new tender process, he needed to make sure that his company could compete for these valuable contracts.

The Scottish Centre for Healthy Working Lives helped him make sense of the regulations.

'We’d done work for this customer before, but we now had to go through a different process for tender work. There were a lot of health and safety questions involved. So, we went to Business Gateway to try and get a bit of advice,' Michael explains.

Free help and advice

Business Gateway recommended Healthy Working Lives, and put Michael in touch with the local team, for free expert help. Small businesses like Premier Bedrooms can find legislation daunting, but with Healthy Working Lives the process of putting policies together becomes much easier.

'We did an in-house health and safety policy and we also did risk assessments,' Michael continues. 'Most of it is common sense, but obviously if you’re applying for contracts then you’ve got to have your policies to hand.'

'Most of your health and safety policies depend on the business. All businesses are different. Healthy Working Lives was able to point out things like ladders, lifting – things that you don’t really think about but could affect you.'

Premier Bedrooms has always taken safety precautions, but Healthy Working Lives helped Michael to formalise his procedures, and put a system in place to help the staff to think about safety in the workplace.

New business

With policies in place, Premier Bedrooms could apply for new contracts.

'Healthy Working Lives helped us to put together policies and procedures that helped us to get tender work,' Michael says.

Saving time

'We’ve had a couple more of those jobs since then, and it’s always good to have that health and safety policy for future reference.'

Now that Premier Bedrooms has all of its policies formally written down, it can react quickly to requests for quotes. This saves time, and Michael’s new knowledge allows Premier Bedrooms to pitch for business easily, without needing outside help.

'If we ever need to tender for work, then the policies are there. When it comes to tenders it helps when you’re one step ahead.'

Lessons learned

Workplace health policies can help small businesses to win new customers, and Healthy Working Lives is a valuable source of advice,

'Certainly, it would have been hard to find the information without Healthy Working Lives.'